A Load Balancing Package on DistributedMemory Systems and its Application

We present a tool, Bisect, for balanced decomposition of spatial domains. In addition to applying a nested bisection algorithm to determine the boundaries of each subdomain, Bisect replicates a user speciied zone along the boundaries of the subdomain in order to minimize future interactions between subdomains. Results of running the tool on the Cray T3D system using both shared memory operations and MPI communications are reported and discussed. In addition, Bisect is used in a parallel implementation of a particle{particle/particle{mesh (P3M) simulation program on the Cray T3D system. The performance of the P3M program with diierent load{balancing criteria is evaluated and compared. The results show that the use of the Bisect package balances the load eeciently and minimizes communication on the T3D massively parallel system.